With
the advent of FaceBook and Smart Phones, I no longer
take pictures so I'm archiving 2 decades of throw
backs pictures that were taken for my website Guy's
Gallery on FaceBook for public viewing of the people
in the Houston Community. Take a walk down memory
lane. Click the picture below to see pictures you
don't have to be a member of FaceBook to view. Enjoy!

Police suspend
officer who dragged 65-year-old woman

The police department in Alpharetta,
Georgia have suspended an officer and opened
an internal investigation regarding a May 4
traffic stop where a 65-year-old grandmother
was pulled from her car.

“I just panicked. I felt like my heart
exploded,” Rose Campbell
told WSB-TV. “I didn’t expect that in
America. I didn’t expect that in Atlanta. I
didn’t expect that especially in
Alpharetta.”

In the full dash cam video posted by the
police department on YouTube, Public Safety
Chief John Robison begins
by promising “a decisive and appropriate
outcome.”

“There are aspects of this video that do
not represent who we are as an
organization,” Robison says.

According to the police, Campbell was
pulled over by officer Michael
Swerdlove after she swerved into a
second lane while turning, almost causing a
collision. Swerdlove is seen approaching the
vehicle and then attempts to warrant a
citation for the incident. Campbell refused
to sign the ticket because she believed it
would be an admission of guilt–and that is
when things quickly escalated.

“He told me he was giving me a citation
for failure to maintain lane. I said for
what? Everybody does that when a cop gives
you a ticket, unless you’re wrong, you’re
gonna ask why,” she said.

Swerdlove told her that if she refused
to sign the citation she would be arrested.
Campbell then attempts to ask for a
supervisor, but the officer demands that she
gets out of the car to attempt an arrest.
Swerdlove is then shown opening Campbell’s
door and begins to pull her out.

“No sir, this is abusive behavior,”
Campbell can be heard saying at one point in
the video. “I’m being abused, I need the
supervisor now!” she continues.

As a second cop approaches the car,
Campbell continues asking for the
supervisor. The cop continues to tug on her,
while the second officer begins to attempt
to pull her out of the car.

A third officer named James Legg
approaches on the passenger’s side, but then
walks around to the other two officers who
are still pulling on Campbell to get out the
car.

As Campbell agrees to get out of the
car, Legg walks around to the driver’s side
and begins cursing at the woman.

“Hey, you’re not in charge! Shut the f—
up and get out the car!” Legg yells at
Campbell. Campbell, who is diabetic says she
was terrified as they attempted to arrest
her.

Legg was suspended as a result of the
investigation. Campbell has hired an
attorney, but has yet to decide if she wants
to take legal action. What she wants is an
apology, she told WSB.

“They need to be put on suspension,
disciplinary action without pay. That
normally works in the brain,” Campbell said.
“I don’t like the issue of firing people.
I think everyone has a space for
redemption.”

Thinking Out of the Box (Creative Thinking)

In a small Italian town,
hundreds of years ago, a small business owner owed a
large sum of money to a loan-shark. The loan-shark was a
very old, unattractive looking guy that just so happened
to fancy the business owner’s daughter.

He decided to offer the businessman a deal that
would completely wipe out the debt he owed him. However,
the catch was that we would only wipe out the debt if he
could marry the businessman’s daughter. Needless to say,
this proposal was met with a look of disgust.

The loan-shark said
that he would place two pebbles into a bag, one white
and one black.

The daughter would then have to reach into the bag
and pick out a pebble. If it was black, the debt would
be wiped, but the loan-shark would then marry her. If it
was white, the debt would also be wiped, but the
daughter wouldn’t have to marry the loan-shark.

Standing on a pebble strewn path in the
businessman’s garden, the loan-shark bent over and
picked up two pebbles. When he was picking them up, the
daughter noticed that he’d picked up two black
pebbles and placed them both into the bag.

He then asked the daughter to reach into the bag and
pick one.

The daughter naturally had three choices as to what
she could have done:

Take both pebbles out
of the bag and expose the loan-shark for cheating.

Refuse to pick a pebble from the bag.

Pick a pebble from the bag fully well knowing it
was black and sacrifice herself for her father’s
freedom.

She drew out a pebble from the bag, and before
looking at it ‘accidentally’ dropped it into the midst
of the other pebbles. She said to the loan-shark;

“Oh,
how clumsy of me. Never mind, if you look into the bag
for the one that is left, you will be able to tell which
pebble I picked.”

The pebble left in the bag is obviously black, and
seeing as the loan-shark didn’t want to be exposed, he
had to play along as if the pebble the daughter dropped
was white, and clear her father’s debt.

Father of 11 killed when
boat capsized on Lake
Conroe

The
community is grieving the loss
of a beloved community coach
after he died in a boating
accident Saturday on Lake
Conroe.

Tenesha Robbins said that
her husband, Jermaine, was
many things to many people.

“He was my greatest love,”
she said. “Not only did I get
to see who he was in his
heart, but he shared that with
the whole community.”

The father of 11 was known
as “Coach Chop” in the
community and served as a
mentor and youth league coach.

“His goal was never to
just teach the kids football,
basketball or track,” Tenesha
Robbins said. “The goal was to
teach them life skills.”

Authorities said that
Jermaine Robbins and two other
men
were fishing when waves
formed by the passing of a
larger boat capsized their
boat near the mouth of Lewis
Creek. He later died at the
hospital.

Tenesha Robbins said that
she has been overwhelmed by
the support from the community
and people who said they were
impacted by Coach Chop and his
life lessons.

“He touched lives, and
people will forever be
different because of who he
was,” she said.

The family is in the
process of making funeral
arrangements.

Starbucks changed
bathroom policy
following racial
firestorm

Starbucks has adopted
an open-bathroom policy
following the arrest last
month of two African
American men at a coffee
shop in Philadelphia.

Chairman Howard
Schultz says he doesn’t
want the company to become
a public bathroom, but
feels employees can make
the “right decision a
hundred percent of the
time,” if that choice is
removed at the store
level.

One of the men
arrested on April 12 was
denied use of a bathroom.
He and his partner sat
down to await a business
meeting they had scheduled
at the store, but were
arrested minutes later by
police.

The incident was
captured by people using
cell phones and it went
viral.

Rashon Nelson, left,
and Donte Robinson,
right

Access to store
bathrooms, for which
Schultz said Starbucks had
maintained a “loose
policy,” came into even
sharper focus after
another video, taken in
January, emerged. The
video shows a black man
claiming he was denied
access to a bathroom at a
Starbucks in California
while a white man was
allowed entry. Neither man
had made a purchase,
according to the video
shot by Brandon Ward,
which is posted on his
Facebook page.

Schultz, speaking at
the Atlantic Council in
Washington on Thursday,
said previous policy
required a purchase, but
that the decision was
ultimately left with store
managers, The Washington,
The Seattle Times, and
other media outlets
reported.

The arrests in
Philadelphia were a major
embarrassment for
Starbucks, which has long
projected itself as a
socially conscious
company.

Nelson and Robinson
settled with Starbucks
earlier this month for an
undisclosed sum and an
offer of a free college
education. Separately,
they reached a deal with
Philadelphia for a
symbolic $1 each and a
promise from city
officials to set up a
$200,000 program for young
entrepreneurs.

Group bails out
incarcerated Black
moms in time for
Mother’s Day

An Atlanta-based
group set out on a
mission to reunite
incarcerated Black women
with their children just
in time for Mother’s
Day. The organizations
Southerners on New
Ground and the National
Bail Out Collective
joined forces to raise
money for women who
could not afford to post
bail,
11 Alive
reported.

Dubbed
#FreeBlackMamas the
initiative—which aims to
help women in 17 cities
across the country—was
created to address
inequalities within the
criminal justice system,
the news outlet writes.
Launched in 2017, last
year campaign organizers
were able to fundraise
enough money to have 100
women released from
jail. Many of the women
that they have helped
were placed behind bars
for minor offenses but
spent long lengths of
time in jail because
financial burdens
prevented them from
posting bail.

“The bail reform
ordinance is an
important first step
towards desperately
needed bail reforms in
Atlanta, but the work of
bail reform and breaking
the cycle of profiling,
targeting and caging of
Atlanta’s poor and black
communities requires
many additional policy
changes and until that
happens, we must
continue to free
ourselves,” Mary Hooks,
Co-Director, SONG, told
11 Alive. Since its
inception, SONG has
raised $1 million to
help 125 individuals. In
the past, with the help
of other organizations,
they’ve been able to
launch fundraising
campaigns to help
release fathers for
Father’s Day.

Racial disparities
surrounding detainment
for non-violent offenses
have been a lingering
issue. According to
Black Enterprise,
there are 220,000 women
in the jail system; 80
percent of them are
mothers and 60 percent
are African American.
There are several
initiatives that have
been created related to
bail reform. Earlier
this year, hip-hop mogul
Jay Z invested $3
million in the bail
reform start-up Promise,
Tech Crunch
reported.

The
PINNACLE Center is free* for use to Fort Bend and City
of Houston residents that are ages 50 and above.